User:Andy Maloney/Notebook/Lab Notebook of Andy Maloney/2009/08/05/Microscope setup

Mercury lamp

Yesterday I tried to look at fluorescein labeled microtubules in our new microscope. Unfortunately the mercury lamp was not aligned properly and so I wasted quite a while fussing with the sample without realizing that I would never be able to see it due to the misalignment. Today I took out the lamp and realized that there is a spacer that goes between the lamp optics housing and the microscope. This was misaligned so I moved it such that the ND filter holder on the housing is now level. Before, it wasn't.

The other issue was that the positioners bottomed out every time we tried to align the arc with its reflection. Initially we though that this meant there was something horribly wrong with the microscope. To try and remedy this, I decided to take the lamp off the microscope and turn it on. This showed that the arc and reflection were never going to line up with each other and that the microscope itself was just fine.

Koch opened the lamp housing, once it was off and had cooled down, and I looked at the mirror that is behind the lamp. I thought that I was going to have to move the mirror which would have been a complicated procedure, however, Koch decided to move the lamp in its housing and we realized that the lamp was not seated properly. Koch moved the lamp a little bit and then refastened the whole rig back together. We looked at the image of the arc on the far wall and aligned and focused the beam so that the arc and its reflection were on top of each other.

I put the housing back on the microscope and refocused the lens so that the image of the arc was on the back aperture of the objective. Now it seems that I am ready for fluorescence studies on the Kiney microscope.